THE Shah Alam coroner’s court will decide next Tuesday whether to initiate contempt proceedings against Attorney-General Tommy Thomas over his comments on the inquest into firemen Mohamad Adib Kassim’s death. 

Coroner Rofiah Mohamad said she would decide on Adib’s family’s leave application fon August 27.

Senior Federal counsel S. Narkunavathy argued earlier that there was no prima facie evidence that Thomas had interfered in the inquest. 

She told the court that Adib’s family’s ex parte application for permission for the committal proceeding was incomplete.

“They are claiming that the AG had disrupted the inquest. But they didn’t state how (he disrupted the inquest),” she said in the Shah Alam High Court. 

Adib’s family’s lawyer Haniff Mohamed Haniff Khatri Abdulla had previously said there was reason to believe that Thomas’ May 28 media statement about the family’s former lawyer Syazlin Mansor verged on contempt.

Thomas had said in the statement that the Attorney-General’s Chambers had ordered Syazlin to withdraw her services as the government’s legal representative in the inquest because it was a conflict of interest for her to represent both the government and the deceased’s family at the same time.
 
Syazlin, who was representing the Housing and Local Government Ministry and the Fire and Rescue Department as well as the fireman’s family in the inquest, had abruptly quit all her three clients in May, saying nothing more than she had been told to do so.

Narkunavathy said Adib’s family were required to show how the AG’s media statement had disrupted the inquest proceedings and prevented Syazlin from representing the Adib family. 

“The AG pulled her out from representing the Housing and Local Government Ministry and the Fire and Rescue Department but didn’t say she couldn’t represent Adib’s family,” she said. 

Haniff argued that Thomas’ statement that Syazlin’s conduct in the inquest did not match the stand of the AG amounted to contempt.

“Narkunavathy said that there must be identification that there was wrong stand taking by the A-G,” he said.
 
“Our question is not if it is right or wrong, so long as a stand is taken in an inquest then that itself is contempt.” 

“The reason why the AG asked the Housing and Local Government Ministry to discharge the services of Syazlin was because she was taking a different stance from the AG.

“But, by taking a stand the AG has interfered with the cause of justice. And that is wrong.” – August 21, 2019.